


fig. 1: apparent magnitudes of well-known objects

by kotaface (aveyune23)



Series: Cloti Fall Festival 2020 [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Cloti Fall Festival 2020, Cloud your heart-eyes are showing, F/M, Idiots in Love, Implied Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, You’re not fooling anyone, a love story as told by friends who are So Done, multiple POVs, unbeta’d because I like to live dangerously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/kotaface
Summary: Everyone can see it but them.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Series: Cloti Fall Festival 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014588
Comments: 25
Kudos: 99
Collections: CloTi Fall Festival 2020 (ClotiWeek)





	fig. 1: apparent magnitudes of well-known objects

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 3 of the 2020 Cloti Fall Festival
> 
> Stargazing + alternate prompt

**_“There is so much history in the way he looks at her, in the way he says her name. When they are together, there is a current that runs between them: like an electric charge on the verge of erupting into a perfect storm.”_ ** **** **_~ Lang Leav_ **

Claudia saw it first.

They were at the shop to buy groceries. Cloud was only four, still clinging to her skirts, shy and quiet as a dormouse, but also wide-eyed and watchful. He’d been to the shop with her hundreds of times. He was grown enough to remember that the shop had sweets, and that the shopkeeper would sometimes let Cloud pick one from the jar if he said ‘hello.’ Claudia assumed he remembered everything else about their shopping trips, like the Mayor’s wife and daughter, who also shopped on Saturdays. 

Apparently not. For whatever reason, on a mundane Saturday morning like all the others, Cloud’s eyes landed on the dark-haired little girl that toddled in with her mother and he froze. 

Claudia felt his chubby fists clench into her skirt, and then he was clinging to her leg so suddenly that she almost fell over. When she looked down to ask him what was the matter, she saw that his blue eyes, always so observant, were locked on to something like he’d never seen it before. He looked startled, and a bolt of motherly panic darted through Claudia’s heart, but when she followed his gaze, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. It was just the two of them and the Lockharts in the shop. They crossed paths every Saturday. 

Claudia ran her fingers through her son’s hair. “Cloud, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

But he just shook his head and pressed closer to her. His stare didn’t waver.

“Cloud, I’m going to trip if you don’t let me go,” she told him, but he only held on tighter and kept staring. “Sweetheart, I have to pay for our things. What is it?”

Always so quiet, Cloud’s whisper was barely audible when he asked, “Who’zat?”

Claudia’s brow wrinkled, but she replied, “That’s Mayor Lockhart’s wife. You remember her, she lives next door.”

He shook his head again, a frown scrunching up his round face. He looked so distressed, for the briefest moment Claudia wondered if he’d seen a ghost. What on Gaia was wrong?

She set down her basket and knelt beside him. Brushing his hair off his forehead revealed no fever. Concern bubbled in her chest. He hadn’t blinked once. 

“Honey—”

“Mama, who’ _zat?_ ”

Claudia turned around to look at where he was staring. Being at his height provided a new perspective. She frowned and cocked her head, puzzled.

“The little girl?” she asked, and Cloud nodded rapidly. She sighed, relieved, though still a bit confused.

“That’s Mayor Lockhart’s daughter, honey. Tifa. Don’t you remember? You see her all the time when we come to the shop.”

Cloud’s grip on her loosened and his body relaxed. He finally let his eyes close, but only to blink; when they opened again, he went right back to staring, though the look in them had changed. Distress had been replaced by awe.

He looked starstruck.

Claudia watched her son for a moment, took another glance at Tifa, and then stood with a long sigh. Cloud didn’t cling so tight after she resumed shopping, but Claudia knew the boy’s eyes were on Tifa the entire time. It left a strange feeling in her heart. 

Cloud knew who Tifa was. They saw her and her mother every Saturday. Perhaps today he simply forgot — he was only four, after all.

The stars in her son’s eyes didn’t fade after they’d left the shop, however, nor did they diminish throughout the day. They were still there when she put him to bed that evening.

 _He’s only four,_ she thought as she turned off the lamp. _It’s nothing. It will pass._

But something deep inside her heart told her otherwise. He was young, yes, but he never missed a thing. 

Shaking her head, Claudia sighed and prayed that the girl would take it easy on him when they were older.

:::

:::

Brian Lockhart saw the way the Strife boy stared at his daughter and it made his blood boil. 

He’d threatened Cloud well enough that the boy kept his distance, but apparently it wasn’t enough to deter him completely. Brian did everything he could to keep Tifa away from him. The boy was no good. Dangerous. The whole town knew it. 

The way his eyes followed Tifa, the way he sought her out and stared, didn’t go unnoticed. The whole town knew about that, too. 

Except Tifa. She was blissfully unaware. Her father prayed it would stay that way. 

:::

:::

Zack didn’t see it at first. Everything started falling down around him when they got to Nibelheim. The things he thought he knew — were they only lies? _What was going on?_

The second he mentioned Tifa’s name to Cloud, though...

If things had been different, Zack would have wasted zero time stepping up to be Cloud’s wingman. It was obvious that his friend needed all the help he could get.

Poor dude had it _bad._

:::

:::

Barret didn’t trust him. The merc was a Shinra mutt. That was a fact that would never change, no matter what Tifa said. The kid was a pain in the ass, bitched too much about money, and didn’t give a single shit about the Planet or what Avalanche was fighting for. 

Barret would’ve put every gil he had and sworn on his wife’s grave that Strife didn’t have a heart. It was a good thing he didn’t, because he’d have lost everything he owned and then some. 

He cautiously began reevaluating his opinion of the ass-wipe after he saw them together. After he saw how those freaky mako-eyes followed Tifa’s every move like a hawk. After he heard the difference in that shit-stain’s whiny voice when he talked about Tifa, when he talked _to_ her.

Barret sure as hell didn’t like him. He definitely didn’t fucking trust him. But he also didn’t miss the effect they had on each other, and that was enough to justify keeping him around for now.

If the spiky-headed son of a bitch was _that_ lovesick, he wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon anyhow.

:::

:::

Jessie called it right after she asked Cloud about Tifa. 

Biggs didn’t buy Jessie’s shit until he saw the two of them together.

Wedge — well, Wedge had to be told outright, but it was pretty obvious even to him after that.

Marle took one look at that boy’s sorry face and knew immediately.

It took all of a day for every resident of the Sector 7 Slums to agree: Mr. Ex-SOLDIER Merc was head over heels for the bartender of Seventh Heaven.

The betting started shortly after.

:::

:::

Aerith had a feeling. Boys didn’t deflect like that unless they were denying it. 

The first time Cloud said her name, a little switch flipped. _Ah, of course._

The way he’d sprinted after that chocobo carriage had flipped another. There was something familiar about the way he’d shouted her name. It sounded —

_Of course._

And once they’d made it into Corneo’s mansion — well, it was obvious. Painfully so. Painful because Aerith could see that Tifa looked at Cloud exactly the same way that Cloud looked at her, and yet neither of them realized it. But painful, too, because the frustration Aerith immediately felt at their obliviousness was accompanied by a twinge of longing, of loneliness.

A different pair of eyes, so similar to Cloud’s, used to look at her that way. Her chest ached with the memory.

She’d do whatever it took to spare both of them that pain. 

The first step was figuring out how to prevent them from doing it to themselves. From the looks of things, she had a lot of work to do. But Aerith always did enjoy a challenge.

:::

:::

Everyone in the party saw it. It was impossible not to.

After countless long days of non-stop walking, dwindling supplies, sleepless nights, and one very traumatic cigarette shortage, their party wavered dangerously between ‘vigilante army’ and ‘volatile powder keg.’ Nerves were raw. Fuses were short. It took little to start an argument. Their cause was united, their goal the same, but some nights it took all their will power and then some to stay civil. 

The one thing that everyone could always agree on, though, was that Cloud and Tifa needed to figure their shit out and fuck already. 

As if chasing a maniac across the Planet in search of revenge wasn’t draining enough, they had to put up with constant ‘will they, won’t they’ tension. It was driving them all crazy. The heart-eyes and longing glances and pining were so damn obvious, it was nauseating. Even Vincent complained about it. _Vincent._ Eventually they all came up with their own tactics for ignoring it, and they mostly worked. Unless they had enemies to fight. 

They were fucking _unbearable_ after a fight.

No one could deny that Cloud and Tifa fought like two halves of the same whole. They were constantly aware of each other on the battlefield; they anticipated each other's every move and delivered combined strikes so flawlessly you’d think they were rehearsed. Watching them fight together was impressive, to say the least. It was also infuriating. If one of them got hurt, it was like the sky had fallen. They all learned right away not to get between Cloud and an injured Tifa, and Tifa was useless every second that Cloud so much as winced. But that wasn’t the worst part. 

The worst part was when they came off a battlefield uninjured and high on adrenaline. The two of them would make eye contact and the sexual tension that erupted between them was like the static after a particularly effective Thundaga spell. The whole party felt it. Cloud and Tifa would be frozen and the rest of them would freeze, too, waiting to see if this was it, if this was the moment.

But it never happened. Cid would immediately light up and smoke through at least two cigarettes in record time, cussing up a storm alongside Barret. Nanaki and Vincent would roll their eyes while Cait Sith muttered something about fortune telling. Yuffie always looked like she wanted to bash them both over the head. 

As for Aerith, she’d simply put her head in her hands and sigh before turning her weary gaze upward to tell the sky about how impossible they were.

:::

:::

Sephiroth recognized the look in Cloud’s eyes, and then used it to break him. 

(It backfired.)  
  


:::

:::

Tifa saw it and told herself she was imagining it. 

Cloud didn’t think of her in that way. He only saw her as a friend. That was it. No matter how much she hoped for more from him, no matter how many times she thought maybe, just maybe, he felt the same way, it wasn’t real. The stars she saw in his eyes when he looked at her were just a product of wishful thinking. Nothing more.

And then they fell into the Lifestream together, and everything changed. For the rest of her life, Tifa would struggle to describe exactly what it was that happened there, but the truth of it was written in his eyes. It always had been.

The stars in his eyes were real. She hadn’t imagined them. They’d been there along.

* * *

  
  
The stars are bright enough for Cloud to count every single freckle on her shoulder.

He counts them to anchor himself. He knows he’s real. He knows because she said so. She found him. She—

He takes a deep breath and lets it out, transfixed at how it ruffles her hair. Tifa’s curled against him, fast asleep and beautiful and wearing nothing but her skin, and it’s this that he’s not quite convinced of. It’s her. How is she real? How?

She hums and burrows closer. Her breath is warm on his skin. He feels it seep through and spread to his heart.

_… 16 … 17 … 18 …_

Something makes her brows pinch. He holds his breath, not wanting her to wake, because what if he’s dreaming this? What if she wakes up and everything vanishes? 

Dark eyelashes flutter against pale cheekbones, and then her eyes open. When she sees him, she smiles softly. The world doesn’t fracture. The stars shine in her eyes. 

_Real._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated.
> 
> About the title: “apparent magnitude” refers to the scale scientists use to classify the brightness of different celestial objects. I like science, I like ridiculous titles, there you go.


End file.
